<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Of haunted nights and burning fires by supernavy97</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29219613">Of haunted nights and burning fires</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/supernavy97/pseuds/supernavy97'>supernavy97</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drama, M/M, Post Chain of Gold, Sad, The Last Hours - Freeform, angst with happy ending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 07:27:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,322</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29219613</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/supernavy97/pseuds/supernavy97</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When all the action and the urgency of finding the antidote and saving who could still be saved were over, the reality and the heartbreaking pain of what had actually happened came crashing down on Thomas, leaving him suffering and searching for answers in a sleeping and annoyingly unresponsive London.</p><p>[post chain of gold]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alastair Carstairs &amp; Thomas Lightwood, Alastair Carstairs/Thomas Lightwood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Of haunted nights and burning fires</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Of haunted nights and burning fires</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>[London, autumn 1903]</p><p>Thomas Lightwood is walking through the streets of an empty London, the early hours locking most people in the quietness of their rooms, making the city a free playground for wandering souls looking for peace in the dark alleys of that chilling autumn night. There’s a soft breeze blowing from time to time, ruffling the curls of his hair and making the tree branches tremble under its light touch – a rain of crumbled brownish leaves now covering the ground. He walks slowly, breathing in with one step and breathing out with the other, trying to calm the racing heartbeats that are shaking his body, tightening the left part of his chest and making it hard to breathe, to move, to <em>live</em>. He has never considered himself a weak person and despite those first years of childhood when his body didn’t seem willing to grow and kept falling under the spells of so many illnesses, he would say he’s become quite strong, years and experiences having built both his character and physique.<br/>
However, this summer had put a strain on his limits and kept challenging them with such an intensity, he fell harmless under them. When all the action and the urgency of finding the antidote and saving who could still be saved were over, the reality and the heartbreaking pain of what had actually happened came crashing down on him, leaving him suffering and searching for answers in a sleeping and annoyingly unresponsive London.<br/>
<em>Barbara was dead.<br/>
</em>His smiling and caring sister had left this world, her frozen body now still and buried along with the tears and regrets of those who were left living.<br/>
It wasn’t fair. Barbara had done nothing – had known nothing. Her body turned cold devoured by the toxin of a demon who was just sending a message. She became the victim of a war that wasn’t hers and how could Thomas keep on living knowing his dear sister – the one who used to tuck his blankets and bring him hot soups when he was ill, the one who used to push him to discover new things, to learn more about the world – that same world that killed her in the end – was irremediably gone? How could he bear with that much pain when she wasn’t there to hold him?<br/>
<br/>
Thomas stops in front of a bench somewhere near the Thames and sits down on it, his face hidden between his big hands trying to hold the waterfall of tears that’s now strolling down his face. His body is shaking violently and in the shadows of the night, away from the eyes of friends and relatives, he allows himself to mourn. It’s not that he doesn’t feel comfortable to show his emotions in front of others, but at the institute he somehow feels his duties as a shadowhunter taking control and he feels the need to be strong, to hold on: for his parents, that are suffering enough, and for all his fellow soldiers who are trying to go on and don’t need a crying kid to remind them of how much they all lost. In there he feels kind of caged, repressed, observed, as if everyone was waiting to see when he would crumble. And they were doing so just to know when to come to aid, when to help, when to support him, but that waiting was making him crazy.<br/>
These stranger streets, however, give him some sort of comfort. Unknown and motionless, they just give him a place to vent without asking him anything in return, without waiting, without staring; they hold him between the moon rays and the night shadows, and they rock him through the sleepless hours on the sound of the bowling wind.</p><p>But Barbara’s death is not the only thing that’s keeping him up at night, there’s something else too, something different but equally frustrating that feeds the grip he feels on his heart and that makes him slamming his hands on the cold metal of the bench, trying to find something that will help him go on in the blood that’s now marking his pale knuckles.<br/>
And this something has a face: dark skin and even darker hair, deep black eyes and pink lips. And this something has a name too, one that Thomas keep repeating in his mind, keep saying out loud as if the melody he’s chanting so furiously will make the other suffer as much as he’s doing.<br/>
<em>Alastair Alastair Alastair.<br/>
</em>Thomas is mad at him. Rabid about the rumors he spread, as if he had felt he was entitled to destroy the confidence his mother had worked so hard to develop, as if he had thought he had the right to give those words such power. Because maybe he hadn’t started them, but the thing with gossip was how fast it spread, and Alastair had been personally responsible for that.<br/>
But in the end, what is hurting him the most it’s the disappointment he felt when Matthew revealed those things at the engagement party. And he’s hurt because he had always tried to stand up for him, to look past the childish – although unfair – behavior he had had at the Academy, to show people how there was some good in him, and when he discovered all that, he felt stabbed in the back, as if all he’d believed till then had just been a lie.<br/>
That day he felt betrayed like he’d never felt before. And he wonders why it hurts so much, why the pain keeps on growing instead of disappearing, why he can’t make the image of that damned Persian boy go away from his head. Why does he care so much, why can’t he just let him go.</p><p>He’s still fully immersed in his thoughts, eyes wet and puffy, sobs shaking his body, when a voice breaks the silence of the night.<br/>
<br/>
“Thomas?”<br/>
<br/>
Thomas feels his blood freezing and his eyes shutting open as soon as the subject of his thoughts suddenly materializes in front of him.<br/>
<br/>
Alastair is standing in the middle of the road, gear on, probably on duty to patrol. And he’s looking his way, startled, confused, his eyebrows curled and his mouth slightly open.<br/>
<br/>
And Thomas can’t hold it back anymore. If it had been another situation, he might have just turned around and ignored him, walked the other way and disappeared from his sight, but tonight his feelings are coming up with all their power, demanding to be acknowledged and addressed after so much time of being dismissed.</p><p>So, he stands up and strolls closer to him, eyes still wet and red from all the crying, but with a fierce determination in them.</p><p>“What are you doing here?” he screams, “I told you not to come closer to me again, wasn’t I clear enough? Do you want to have a swim in the Thames?”</p><p>Alastair is totally stunned. Not really for the anger and frustration in Thomas’ voice – he knows he deserves it, and he’s ready to accept it –, but what’s shocking him is the way Thomas is shaken: long dark circles under his eyes, wet lines striking his cheeks, the way his lips tremble while yelling, the way his hands incoherently punch him on the shoulders, pushing him towards the small wall on the riverside.<br/>
Alastair is terrified by the way Thomas is hurting – kind and lovely Thomas, always smiling and finding the good in people, now broken under such emotions that are drawing foreign expressions on the other’s face.</p><p>“Thomas--” he tries to hold him, tries to calm him down, but the hurricane that has awaken inside him is so strong he feels completely overtaken.</p><p>“Why did you do it?” he keeps on shouting, fists gripping the skin of his arms, leaving red marks underneath it. “Why did you have to be such an asshole? What on Earth have I ever done to you to deserve it- what did my mother do?!”</p><p>Tears are falling down again on Thomas’ face, and Alastair can’t bear it to see him like that. On top of that, knowing <em>he</em>’s one of the reasons why the other is suffering like that – so intensely and so deeply – it’s killing him. He doesn’t know when Thomas started having such an influence on his life, when he started to notice his laugh in a room full of people, when he started to think about him without having a reason to. Maybe it was because of Charles, because of the void he had left in him, but deep inside Alastair knows it has nothing to do with the Fairchilds. He remembers when he saw him in Paris and how surprised he was to see the man he had become: so handsome and so strong, a giant that had nothing in common with the fragile boy he had met at the Academy. The kindness was still the same, though. He remembers when he met him again in London and between killing demons, he showed him his tattoo and he remembers the sparkle he felt when his fingers lingered over the inked skin.<br/>
Alastair wonders when he started to feel things for the other too. It’s useless to deny it when seeing him so broken it’s evidently breaking him too, and there’s no point in kidding oneself when he would gladly take on all his pain, if it meant Thomas would finally be ok.</p><p>“By the Angel, why?! What did Barbara do?” he yells again and that’s when Alastair realizes it is no longer just about him. Thomas is being overwhelmed by all what happened in the last few months: his sister dying, James being called from the demons’ realm, Christopher almost dying too, and of course <em>him</em> breaking the illusion of being the good man Thomas had seen in him.</p><p>“I just want all this pain to stop, why doesn’t it stop, why doesn’t it let me breathe?!” he screams, and Alastair doesn’t know what to do, especially when Thomas is looking at him so heartbrokenly, breathing hard, his chest moving up and down irregularly, following the uneven rhythm of the mess in his head and the pain slowly burning his soul.</p><p>And Alastair doesn’t want to see that anymore. He doesn’t want light-hearted and gentle Thomas to be scarred by such raw and agonizing emotions, he doesn’t want to risk them taking over the positiveness that has always characterized the other, and that’s why he does the only thing he can think of in the middle of that chaos.</p><p>He kisses him.<br/>
Hard and fiercely.<br/>
Anything to make him forget, to distract his mind from the exhausting flow of thoughts that’s overcrowding it.<br/>
And Thomas kisses him back.<br/>
After a first moment of surprise, he brings his hands to his face and keeps kissing him back. Angrily, roughly, violently.<br/>
He pushes him more against the brickwork and Alastair feels slowly maneuvered until he’s sitting on it, Thomas between his legs and all over him.<br/>
There’s no gentleness in the way they devour each other, no embarrassment, no shame. They’re both way over dealing with the understanding of their sexuality, there’s an uncontrollable need to feel now. There’s lust, desire – hands touching and teeth biting.<br/>
Thomas agonizes chasing the need to feel something other than the pain of his sister dying, of Eugene and his parents crying, and of all the rest of the turbulence that has clouded his mind these last few weeks.<br/>
He grounds himself on the feeling of Alastair’s lips on his, instead, on the way his body fits perfectly between his arms, the way his mind empties and all he can think about it’s the feeling that’s boiling in his veins, warming up his whole body in the cold autumn night.<br/>
And Alastair meets him again and again and again, matching his instincts and feeding his fire.</p><p>When they break apart, minutes later, Thomas lowers his head and steadies him on the wall, trying to catch his breath. Alastair stands still, letting the other decide where to go from then on. He knows he has no power nor any right to decision, so he just watches him calming down and smiles seeing the negative expression gone from the boy’s face.<br/>
It’s good, he thinks. Thomas is someone that’s made to be happy.</p><p>When he comes back to himself, Thomas pulls back, turning around and avoiding his gaze, and Alastair thinks that’s a pity because he did see a glimpse of his eyes, chocolate brown spheres shining in the light of the lamps, reflecting the moon pale rays. He's always hated his own eyes, inexpressive in their dark color, but Thomas’ were a scenery he would have gladly lost himself into.</p><p>He jumps down, pulling himself together and fixing his gear. He still has some hours of patrol to do.<br/>
Thomas is standing some meters away from him, still, arms aligned to his body. The night sky is slowly getting clearer, the first rays of the day coming up from the horizon.</p><p>“I’m still mad” he says finally, breaking the silence “and you’re still not forgiven.”</p><p>Alastair nods, understanding, even though he knows the other can’t really see him, and when Thomas doesn’t speak anymore, he takes it as his clue to leave.<br/>
He turns around and he’s about to walk away when a soft whisper fills the silence, almost gone unheard.</p><p>“But thank you.”</p><p>And Alastair smiles, content, because despite the imperfect man he knows he is, despite the hurt and pain he knows he caused the other, he’s happy to know that tonight he managed to make it up to him a little, to take back some of his sufferance. And maybe someday he will be able to even his bargain and when Thomas will look at him, he will see a man that deserves to be at his side.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hello, this is my first shadowhunters fic, I really hope you enjoyed it!<br/>If you have any thoughts at all, just let me know in the comments! I like to know what you liked, what you didn't like, where I can improve. </p><p>I feel I went kind of OOC with Alastairs so I will definitely try to work on that.</p><p>I can't wait for chain of iron to be out, and stay safe everyone!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>